Since Christmas day of my eighth-grade year, I have styled a red flip-phone, and then a slide-phone, touch screen. Until two weeks ago, I had to slide my phone keyboard down to text, to punch in numbers to call. My little Nugget had a unique feature, meaning it only communicated through telephone wire or satellite, or whatever it was we kids did those days.
Cellular phone definition according to Oxford English Dictionary: A telephone with access to a cellular radio system so it can be used over a wide area, without a physical connection to a network. Also called mobile phone.
At almost 22 years old, I have voluntarily held off on getting a smartphone. But, 2015 caught up with me two weeks ago and I got one, and I cannot argue that my “smartphone” galaxy-intergalactic-whatever isn’t changing my world.
I loved my "dumb" phone because it was reliable, and because when it fell out of my pocket while running across the street and when I drop-kicked it to the sidewalk, it didn’t even scratch. I could call you. I could text you. It was functional. My group messaging, however, was a first-world-problem horror story.
But my smartphone, this minicomputer, can do everything. It has email, Internet, news, YouTube, camera, video, a million places to take notes, every app I could ever imagine, and I can call and text. I could put music on it, too. But I’m getting anxious thinking about it. Isn’t that too many important things in one place?
Smartphone definition according to Urban Dictionary: A cellular phone that is not only more intelligent and productive than its owner, but would also be rescued from a flood before the owner's mother-in-law.
Getting emails sent to me all day is stressful (I have yet to figure out how to change my alert preferences). I don’t get to choose when to put my business cap on if I’m always wearing it. My phone buzzes: new emails, set up your voice mail, new incoming texts. It is all kinds of distracting and unfortunate to be in this loop all the time.
And what a distraction it is. We check our phones in awkward silences. We become less social. We become 2-D. Slip into the 2-D, and no one will bother you: We know the code.
This code keeps us from being observant.
Two-dimensional according to Meriam-Webster dictionary: 1) having only two dimensions (such as length and width). 2) Not having qualities that are like the qualities of a real person.
If we’re attached to a screen that flashes and unfolds images, what are we seeing around us? I wouldn’t have seen the leaves flying in the air, landing like snowflakes, or the squirrels jumping across the street, rolling like bouncy balls, if I had been checking my email. I want to wait to see my baby cousin until I’m there with her, I want to get updates from my friends when I see the smiles on their faces, I want to choose when I have to respond to my email, with a cup of tea and a deep breath. I need space from this digital world because I wish to live in the three-dimensional one. It holds so much more texture.
Three-dimensional according to Meriam-Webster dictionary: 1) Having or seeming to have length, width, and depth. 2) Having different qualities that are like the qualities of a real person.
I desire the silence of walking home from class with hands touching the inside of my pockets, desire the ceremony of sitting down to respond to others, desire to see what’s happening in front of me instead of what has already happened in front of other people. I like my flashy new phone because it takes really great pictures. That’s why I like my new phone. I will not let it lord over me.
We live in the age of the smartphone, and yes, I have finally joined you there. And yet this technology has challenged us to move so far into the future, we seem to only have images from the past in our palms.
What about the right now? You can’t see that through my screen, but only when your hands are in your lap, and your eyes are open and alert. Seeing, and not yet responding.
